I ditched corporate America in 1994 and started a management consulting and venture capital firm (http://petercohan.com). I started following stocks in 1981 when I was in grad school at MIT and started analyzing tech stocks as a guest on CNBC in 1998. I became a Forbes contributor in April 2011. My 11th book is "Hungry Start-up Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision" (http://goo.gl/ygaUV). I also teach business strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.

Is Startup Success Gender-Neutral?

Is there a specific set of traits that boost a person’s odds of being a successful start-up CEO? If so, do start-up capital providers seek out people with those traits regardless of gender? If not, are capital providers biased towards investing in men-led ventures?

My guess is that the answers are yes, in some cases, and often. And since venture capital has woefully under-performed as an asset class — according to Cambridge Associates, the internal rate of return on the average VC fund in the decade ending 2012 was a meager 6.9% below the NASDAQ’s 8.5% – it desperately needs more successful entrepreneurs who can boost VC’s’ returns.

Adding more women and men – possessed with the traits that lead to successful exits – to the pool of start-up CEOs could help. And to do that, both capital providers and entrepreneurs should make some changes.

Yet some women entrepreneurs who have gotten funding generated tremendous value for shareholders and thousands of jobs. And my interviews with a woman entrepreneur and a venture capitalist who has reaped that value, suggest that the traits of a successful entrepreneur are the same for men and women — and that men and women should examine whether they have those traits before launching a start-up.

The NEVCA’s survey found that 70% of Boston-area entrepreneurs say that the region’s startup community is either sometimes or not at all inclusive to female entrepreneurs. NEVCA executive director, C.A. Webb, explained in a July 24 interview, that she wants Boston to be the best place for women-led start-ups.

“Our vision is to make our city the best for men and women start-ups. This means doing more of what we are already doing and some new things as well. We need to maintain and strengthen our base of venture capital and angel investors, make mentors accessible to entrepreneurs, and build our clusters of knowledge and expertise in enterprise, robotics, and healthcare IT,” said Webb.

She also wants aspiring political leaders to work with local investors and entrepreneurs to help the region compete. According to Webb, “We need the candidates running for Mayor of Boston and soon, Massachusetts governor, to be more declarative about Boston’s strength in IT — not just biotech. And we need them to work with the start-up community to craft strategies to make the region more competitive.”

But Webb’s vision for a gender-blind startup community will not happen unless the “pipeline” is more robust. “More girls in K through 12 must take math and science; they should go to coding camps; adults should lobby for computer science education in public schools; CEOs should recruit and hire more women; and investors and entrepreneurs should invite more women to social events — like Red Sox games.”

In general, Webb believes that there is much that educators, politicians, investors, and entrepreneurs can do to help produce more women entrepreneurs. But will these things help if a person lacks the basic traits for entrepreneurial success?

Carol Barash, founder and CEO of NYC-based Story to College, sees the same attitudes towards women entrepreneurs in Manhattan as the ones highlighted in the NEVCA study. But she believes that women need to make themselves better entrepreneurs rather than waiting for the world to adapt to them.

“Raising money, hiring and firing people, and negotiating with customers and suppliers require toughness and persistence. On July 23, Story to College won the Count Me In Urban Rebound accelerator program for women entrepreneurs sponsored by Sam’s Club. Too many women CEOs at Count Me In could not answer basic questions about their start-ups — such as how much profit they would make this year or who their competitors are.”

Barash, author of Write Out Loud, has observed the importance of toughness and resilience from role models. “My mother started a company and sold it for $20 million. In order to do that, I saw her make sacrifices — she tended to the business more than to herself.”

While I am seeking statistics about the relative investment performance of women-led start-ups, research suggests that women at the top of publicly traded companies contribute to higher investment returns for their shareholders.

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